Camila Cabello’s Camila album (pictured) was at No.4 with Dave Matthews Band’s Come Tomorrow at No.5.

Sony Corp used today’s (July 31) financial update to announce that it had acquired the remaining minority stake in EMI Music Publishing, previously owned by the Jackson Estate, in a $287.5m deal.

The Jackson Estate has relinquished approximately 10% of EMI Music Publishing to Sony as part of the agreement.

Sony bought a 60% stake in EMP (to increase its overall holding to 90%) in a $2.3bn deal in May – a transaction which is now subject to regulatory approval.

Sony Corp’s music publishing division – which includes Sony/ATV in addition to Sony’s separate publishing interest in Japan – posted revenues of 21.464bn Yen in the three months to end of June (fiscal Q1 / calendar Q2).

That translates to a USD figure of $196.7m, and was up 29.7% at the constant currency dollar level on the same period in 2017 ($151.7m / 16.858bn Yen).

At the dollar level, that figure translated to $1.66bn – up 9.6% on the $1.52bn (168.57bn Yen) posted in fiscal Q1 / calendar Q2 of the previous year.

Note: MBW has reverse-engineered Sony’s financials from Japanese Yen into US dollars at the following prevailing exchange rates in each quarter, as confirmed by Sony Corp:

Calendar Q1 2017: 113.7 Yen per USD

Calendar Q2 2017: 111.1 Yen per USD

Calendar Q3 2017: 111.0 Yen per USD

Calendar Q4 2017: 113.0 Yen per USD

Calendar Q1 2018: 108.4 Yen per USD

Calendar Q2 2018: 109.1 Yen per USD

By applying these exchange figures to each applicable period, we effectively get a US-leaning constant currency picture of Sony Music’s performance.

This isn’t a perfect system; it risks overplaying the major record company’s global business slightly by converting a chunk of revenues from Sony Music Entertainment Japan (which would usually be straight-reported in Yen) into US dollars.

But it provides us with a cleaner reflection of the performance of New York-based Sony Music Entertainment outside of FX distortion – because the company had to convert its US currency into Yen in the first place for Sony Corp’s results.

This is also believed to be the yardstick used internally at Sony Music Entertainment’s HQ in New York.

See below for a table and chart showing Sony Music’s recent quarterly revenue breakdown at the Yen level.